: Whirligigs
Author: O’Henry
It’s a sad truth that the short story market is suffering. Novels still sell, but few people read short stories any more. It’s been a while since I’ve read a collection, but I’m definitely putting some on my shopping list: reading these was a terrific experience. They are short enough you can read one in ten to thirty minutes, yet they manage to envelope you in a world of their own. O’Henry writes with such verve and wit you just cannot help but smile through the reading, and so his many characters are inspired. This books contains dozens of classics. There are tragicomedies, fateful romances, stories of ill-fated robberies, Westerns, pursuits, and hilarious parodies. So many of these tales have made permanent marks on my psyche it’s hard to know where to begin. A few things stand out: 1) O’Henry’s ability to stamp a character with just a few phrases of description, yet keep the character from being a stereotype; 2) the elegance of O’Henry’s prose, humorous almost without effort, and as ingenious as a riddle; and 3) the marvel of outrageous, clever plots that stem entirely from the characters and come across as natural and believable. An example of the latter? One story deals with star-crossed lovers. He’s on the run for murder, hiding out in an anonymous South American town. He thinks she’ll never marry him if she knows he killed a man in a bar fight. But when she confesses she’s on the run for poisoning her abusive husband, they declare they are made for each other and agree to marry. Immediately after, however, a ship from the States arrives with the man the lover had supposedly killed — he’s not a murderer after all! He rushes off to tell his fiance that the wedding’s off, only to discover she’s read a months-old newspaper account that her husband didn’t die from the poisoning, and she’s left for America!
Here’s an example of O’Henry style and wit:
“He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head.”
(Note: The Amazon.com link above doesn’t link to this book, but a similar one of O’Henry short stories; this book is apparently out of print. The version I read is in DOC format for the Palm PDA. The download is free!)
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